Motorola Moto E5 Play
Autumn 2018 has seen a slew of budget Android phones hit shelves. Tom Bruce, Christopher Minasians and Nathan Spendelow deliver their verdicts
The Moto E5 Play has much in common with its more expensive sibling: the same Snapdragon 425 processor, the same 16GB of RAM, the same black, all-plastic design. It’s more compact, though, with a 5.34in screen that has a 960 x 480 resolution. That’s poor for a modern-day phone even at this price, with the year-old Vodafone Smart N8 sporting a 720p display. Nor is the screen easy on the eye. There’s noticeable colour shift when tilting the phone, and it measured poorly for colour accuracy and contrast ratio in our tests.
It’s also a shame that Motorola chose to provide only 1GB of RAM. Even an extra 512MB would have helped navigate Android 8 with more fluidity, with an annoying pause as you switch between apps. And, despite its name, this phone isn’t cut out to play tough games. You can fire up Candy Crush or Temple Run, but forget PUBG Mobile.
At this point, you may be wondering how on earth it gains four stars, but there are two good reasons. The first is its battery life. It’s no match for the bigger battery in the incredibly long-lasting E5 Plus, but a result of 10hrs 9mins in our video rundown test means that it should survive a day’s use. And even if it doesn’t, it has a secret weapon: you can swap out its battery. Add quick charging via the micro-USB socket and it’s a solid choice.
The second reason is its camera, although our first impression of its talents were terrible. Fortunately, that’s because we were viewing the results on the screen. On a computer display, it was a different story. Despite only having a rear 8-megapixel f/2.0 and front 5-megapixel single lens camera, the E5 Play captures plenty of light and detail. It even captures lifelike colours.
When you consider the third key factor, its price, the E5 Play suddenly starts to look like a contender. We’re also fans of the forward-facing speaker and the fast fingerprint reader. If you aren’t worried about taking photos then the Smart N8 is a better choice due to its superior screen, but this is still terrific value.
KEY SPECS & RESULTS Quad-core 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 1GB RAM 16GB storage 5.34in 480 x 960 display Android 8 8MP rear camera 5MP front camera 148 x 9.2 x 71mm (WDH) 150g Geekbench scores 590/1,482 Manhattan 3 off-screen 3fps 10hrs 9mins battery life
Founded in 2010, Chinese-born Nuu Mobile has worked quickly to launch an international operation with offices around the world, including the UK. It’s still quite unknown, but the arrival of the superb Nuu Mobile G3 could soon change that. This sleek, shiny beauty has a 5.7in, 720 x 1,440 IPS display, a MediaTek Helio P25 processor, 4GB RAM and 64GB of storage. The P25 nestles somewhere between the Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 and 450, and puts the G3 nearly up there with the Motorola Moto G6. It actually outperformed more expensive handsets in the GFXBench Manhattan on-screen test, with a 17fps result. Battery life isn’t as impressive, crawling just over the nine-hour mark, and that will drop still further if you take advantage of the bright screen. It hit highs of 700cd/m2, which – together with high contrast levels – helps to distract from its mediocre colour accuracy. Selfie-snappers will enjoy the wide angle 13-megapixel front-facing camera, especially as you can allow the fingerprint sensor to serve as the shutter so you don’t need to touch the screen to take a picture. The rear setup includes a 13-megapixel camera with a secondary 2-megapixel lens for depth-sensing and auto-focus. Sadly, in low-light conditions the camera struggles due to image noise. Even outdoors, in good light, photos were overexposed, with it struggling to pick up on the contrast between surfaces of a similar colour (such as bricks in a wall). Another downside? This phone runs Android 7.1, which means a default maximum aspect ratio of 1.86:1 for all apps – so you can’t take full advantage of the screen size. At least Nuu Mobile doesn’t include undeletable preinstalled apps, so you get a clean home screen. The efficient fingerprint reader is accompanied by less functional face recognition. A hilarious The Matrix- style graphic appears when you’re scanning your face but, less amusingly, it doesn’t let you enable both face and fingerprint recognition, just one or the other. So this phone has its frustrations, but a decent spec and two-year warranty mean it remains a formidable budget handset.
“Nuu Mobile is still quite unknown outside of China, but the arrival of the superb G3 could soon change that”
KEY SPECS & RESULTS Octa-core 2.39GHz Helio P25 4GB RAM 64GB storage 5.7in 720 x 1,440 display Android 7.1 13MP/5MP rear camera 13MP front camera 153 x 9 x 70mm (WDH) 169g Geekbench scores 847/3,357 Manhattan 3 off-screen 10fps 9hrs 3mins battery life